On this page you will find recent articles related to Lyme disease and its treatment that we at Golden Rey thought were interesting or significant.

More than 1 in 10 people successfully treated with antibiotics for Lyme disease go on to develop chronic, sometimes debilitating, and poorly understood symptoms of fatigue and brain fog that may last for years after their initial infection has cleared up. Now, in a small study, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report they have used an advanced form of brain scan to show that 12 people with documented post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS) all show elevation of a chemical marker of widespread brain inflammation, compared with 19 healthy controls.

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A new study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that a slow-growing variant form of Lyme bacteria caused severe symptoms in a mouse model. The slow-growing variant form of Lyme bacteria, according to the researchers, may account for the persistent symptoms seen in ten to twenty percent of Lyme patients that are not cured by the current Lyme antibiotic treatment.

The study, published March 28 in Discovery Medicine, also found that these “persister” Lyme bacteria were resistant to standard single-antibiotic Lyme treatments currently used to treat Lyme patients, while a three-antibiotic cocktail eradicated the Lyme bacteria in the mouse model.

Antibiotics, such as doxycycline, can usually clear Lyme disease in a few weeks, but in some cases, the infection persists. According to the authors of a new study, approximately 10–20 percent of those who contract Lyme disease continue to report symptoms for months, and in some cases, years.

These so-called persister B. burgdorferi cells are more resilient to antibiotics. But this new research may have found an unexpected ally in the fight against these Lyme disease dormant bacteria: essential oils.